Affiliates
Ranjit Dhillon shares expert knowledge on affiliate websites, lead generation, affiliate networks, affiliate sites, affiliate partners and website affiliates
Affiliate marketing is primarily a channel designed to increase visits, awareness, sales and revenue through a range of partnerships with websites and various other promotional methods. There are various classifications of sites that operate in the affiliate space including Cashback, VoucherCode, Loyalty, Aggregators/Comparison, Content as well as email, PPC, retargeting and numerous others. These all combine to act as an increased virtual sales force for a brand and ultimately deliver sales.
Affiliate marketing is a cost effective method to drive awareness, traffic and ultimately sales for a brand as it is a pay per performance model which means you only pay for the sales you receive on a CPA basis.
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Affiliate Campaign Overview
Your objective could be to stimulate and engage potential customers at all stages of their user journey to engage them with your brand and ultimately convert them into your customers. Within affiliates you could do this by segmenting the affiliate base to utilise the various types of affiliate partners in different ways, with different assets to achieve different objectives.
Content – Awareness and Consideration – Consider using targeted sites with specific content that is related to the product or service where you could expose your brand to relevant target audiences. This may have low conversion levels to begin with but is great for brand exposure and could help fuel sales further down your sales funnel.
Aggregators – Consideration/Conversion – You could establish key partnerships with aggregator and comparison sites that use feeds and algorithms to compare various service providers to provide users with a review on the most suitable products for their needs could be a key task. Prominence here could position the brand’s competitive offering well and encourage conversions as the consumer is at the consideration stage.
Incentive sites – Consideration/Conversion – Incentive affiliates can drive between 60-80% of a programmes sales volume/revenue and could be a key element of any campaign. There are certain challenges that can be faced when working with these partners but they can be extremely effective in driving sales for brands, especially when provided with a strong brand, offer and excusive CPA’s. Incentive sites could also be useful in driving awareness amongst a savvy price conscious consumer base that may not otherwise have had exposure to your brand or business.
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High Level Affiliate Goals
- Launch re-targeting email for customers falling off order journey
- Design your existing/new affiliate recruitment page to make it easier for potential partners to sign-up.
- Send email to your existing customer base with an invitation to become an affiliate through one of the many networks available such as Trade-Doubler or Affiliate Future.
- Aim to increase your list of super affiliate’s month on month.
- Aim to Increase reach through recruitment of all affiliates promoting the program.
- Ensure maximum efficiency of the program by ensuring all relevant subscribed affiliates are actively promoting the program through optimum messaging.
- Deliver cost effective sales.
- Increase sales/revenue.
- Reduce costs, improve ROI.
- Use SEO, PPC and social media techniques to support affiliate marketing channel growth.
- Consider creating online Voucher codes; make the move into ‘Voucher Code super-affiliate’ websites as these could be a lucrative investment for your business.